National Review’s David Kopel reminds readers that John Ashcroft’s PR nipple nightmare — stemming from his aversion to giant pewter nipples (fetish crawler, here we come!) — could’ve been turned into a PR triumph had the Attorney General and his staff just framed his concern with looming boobies in just the right way:

[…]rather than being mocked for prudishness, Ashcroft could have been celebrated as a vanguard of sensitive p.c. feminism if he had merely explained that he was covering the statue in order to prevent sexual harassment. Over the last decade, statues and paintings all over America have been removed at the insistence of the p.c. police.

Kopel’s article points out a series of instances in which paintings such as Goya’s “Naked Maja” or Renoir’s “Bather” have been covered up or removed from display at the behest of PC sentinnels worried about sexual harrasment suits. The University of Nebraska, in fact, even went so far as to order a graduate student to remove from his desk a 5 x 7 photo of his bikini-clad wife after some of his co-workers complained.

…None of which will prevent protein wisdom from showing you “woman breastfeeding a chimp.” Yes, you can take away my Goya, but you can never…take…my MONKEY…!